Nexla, a next generation data operations platform, today has launched a public beta for its product that manages secure inter-company data collaboration at scale at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield in New York. The launch comes on the heels of the company's $3.5 million seed funding round led by Blumberg Capital with participation from Storm Ventures, Engineering Capital and Correlation Ventures. In addition, the company also unveils the results of its recent report, The 2017 Definitive Data Operations Report, illuminating the critical need for automation in data operations. To view the full findings, please visit https://nexla.com/resources.

New data types emerging from IoT, connected cars, healthcare, e-commerce, travel and more is causing an influx of data at an exponential rate. That data, needed for sophisticated machine learning models, exists not only with companies themselves but also in thousands of public and private sources outside of the enterprise boundary. With 91 percent of companies ingesting data from third parties today, traditional data pipelines are not equipped to manage the movement of data across company lines.

"Nexla addresses a critical problem in data operations today," said Bruce Taragin, managing director, Blumberg Capital. "Today inter-company data collaboration requires data engineers to customize solutions due to incompatible data formats, heterogeneous storage environments and the need to access thousands of data streams. Nexla's solution streamlines this process, enabling engineers the freedom to focus on innovation."

Nexla's platform helps companies like Instacart solve the lengthy challenges associated with data operations, so that engineers can focus on other tasks, such as machine learning and advanced analytics. "Nexla makes sharing data between companies, in any format, really easy," said Brandon Leonardo, Co-founder, Instacart. The web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform has an easy-to-use interface that allows business users to set up data pipelines, transform data and grant and revoke access to partners. The solution functions without relying on engineering teams, making the data engineer's job easier by empowering other users to access the data they need.

In The 2017 Definitive Data Operations Report, the national survey asked data engineers about the current state of data operations at their companies. At a high level, the survey found that almost all companies, across all industries, are ingesting data from third-party sources and that 73 percent of companies also share data outside of their organization. Some data executives do not believe their companies and managers understand how much effort is required to keep their data operations flowing.

Other findings include:

-70 percent of companies have teams working on machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI)
-64 percent of companies say they will do more with machine learning or AI in the next year
-70 percent of companies have plans to hire in DataOps in the next year
-14 percent of companies are generating over one terabyte (TB) of data per day
-34 percent of companies currently or plan to share raw data with partners
-30 percent of data executives do not agree that their management understands the effort required to maintain their data operations
-FTP and Dropbox are the most popular ways to share data, ahead of APIs

"The challenge of inter-company data collaboration demands a scalable and repeatable process," said Saket Saurabh, co-founder and CEO. "Just as we are shifting away from painstakingly managing our servers to the simplicity of cloud computing principles, it is time to streamline data operations. We need to simplify how we manage the flow of data so businesses can derive more value from data. We are honored to be able to showcase our product as a contender in TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield."

With the new round of funding, Nexla plans to grow its team in engineering, product management, sales, and customer success at its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters. To see current job openings, please visit http://careers.nexla.com.

Methodology
To better understand the current state of data operations and the weight it puts on data professionals, Nexla surveyed 311 U.S. adult data professionals, across 40 different industries and 105 different cities, about their company's data operations organization, tools, and procedures. The survey took place between April 1- 22, 2017. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate, no estimates of sampling error can be calculated.

About Nexla
Nexla is a scalable and secure data operations platform that manages inter-company data collaboration. It allows business users to send, receive, transform, and monitor data in their preferred format via an easy-to-use web interface. Nexla automates DataOps so companies can quickly derive value from their data, with minimal engineering required. To learn more, visit https://nexla.com/